Definitely Iron Giant.
I have to add Optimus Prime’s death scene from Transformers: The Move. Actually, everything from “Megatron must be stopped… no matter the cost,” until he dies. Sigh.
I must have something for robots.
OMG I cannot even go to the site with the 4 Weddings and A Funeral poem for fear of weeping at work.
See also: Rabbit Proof Fence. Pretty much the whole thing made me teary.
Man, I could add a “me, too” to so many of these scenes, some of which I almost tear up just picturing.
So here’s my addition:
That scene in Running on Empty, when Christine Lahti’s character meets with her father in the restaurant. She tries to convince him to take her son in while the rest of the family will go back on the lam. As soon as the father starts to cry, I burst into tears. I’m helpless to resist.
Also: Any scene with Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream. I don’t have the stamina to sit through that movie again.
I’ll add the very end of Dambusters where Guy Gibson leaves Barnes Wallace saying he’s got some letters to write - to the families of the dead crewmen.
The end of L’Assassin - the original French version where she’s been taken off to her death (never explicitly stated but implied) and her controller says to her boyfriend “We’re going to miss her.” and the other nods.
How about the end of Cnema Paradiso?
For those who haven’t seen it,
Toto learns that Salvatore, his mentor and hometown’s movie house projectionist has died. The entire film is then told in a flashback, showing how Toto regarded Salvatore as both a mentor and a friend growing up. At the end, back at the present, Toto recieves a final gift from Salvatore: a film reel spliced together showing all the kissing scenes from the movies over the years that the church insisted be cut before they were shown, giving Toto a final reminder as to the importance of love.
Here’s one I haven’t seen mentioned that breaks me down so bad I have to plan to watch the movie when no one else is around to see me cry:
The end of “Map of the Human Heart”
When my wife and I were first dating, I gave her a stack of movies to watch while I was away for the summer. I only told her that the movie had a sad ending (not too much build-up). She sobbed for hours and refuses to watch it again.
Also, sign me up for “Elephant Man” as well … the whole thing.
The second ending of A.I. gets me. When Teddy climbs on the bed, coupled with the realization that to become human is to die. And, knowing that Teddy is going to be sitting on the bed for years and years, waiting for them to wake up.
Grave of the Fireflies – whole thing. Jebus.
James and The Giant Peach – the song James sings in his bedroom.
A Simple Plan – the end. Knowing that things are never, ever going to be right again.
A Perfect World – the end. You know it’s coming, but, damnit, you don’t want it to end like that.
Toy Story 2 – that damned song. Curse you, Randy Newman!
2001: A Space Odyssey – while HAL’s deactivation didn’t make me tear up, it’s close. Seeing Dave’s reaction to HAL asking if he’d like to hear a song – the switch from self-preservation and revenge to killing a retard… The people who think Kubrick was a ‘cold’ director have their heads squarely up their asses.
What gets me is the ending of “The Champ” when little Ricky Schroeder tries to get the Champ to “wake up”.
The Children’s Hour-Shirley Maclaine telling Audrey Hepburn that she’s in love with her…she thinks…she’s so confused…and crying…then she said “you’re frightened by my telling you this…but i’m MORE frightened!” my heart breaks everytime i see it.
Well, while the movie is not that sad in itself, in The Sound of Music, when Captain Von Trapp sings Eidelweiss during the music festival and and starts to cry…I lose it. Each and every time.
E.T. The scene where we think E.T. is dead, and Elliot is saying goodbye. I’ve watched the movie about twenty times over the last twenty years, and I still cry every frickin’ time! It is now personal policy: I don’t watch E.T. Ever.
The Green Mile: in the scene in which John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) explains that the killer threatened each of the little girls that he’d kill her sister if she didn’t keep quiet, he says something like, “He used their love for each other to kill them.”
Brassed Off: when the band assembles outside Pete Postlethwaite’s hospital room and plays “Danny Boy.” (Okay, just playing “Danny Boy” will often do it for me.)
The final scene of Cyrano de Bergerac when Roxanne says, “I have only loved one man in my life, and I have lost him twice.” It’s had the same effect for me in every film and stage version I’ve seen, and every time I read it.
And finally, the end of Il Postino, which is made all the more poignant by knowing that the fabulous actor, Massimo Troisi, who had worked for ten years to get the film made, died days after it was completed.
Cop Land was on at the weekend over here - and i’d forgotten how bloody good it is. It has my all time saddest line in.
Its Freddy’s (sly stallone’s) line, when he’s with Liz, the girl who he rescued and fell in love with but who married (in the words of Ray Liotta) “that cckscker” Joey Randone. It sums up all his pain and sadness yet even though he’s hurting so much, and even though she blatantly knows, he still can’t tell her that he loves her.
Liz: Why is it that you never got married Freddy?
Freddy: (slowly and quietly) All the best girls were taken.
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W. H. Auden
From Four Weddings and a Funeral in case you didn’t know.
No one mentioned the end of Life is Beautiful? I was a bawling idiot at the end of that movie…
Benigni goes running around the corner, there’s a gun shot, and then the voice over of the adult kid…
snif
In an otherwise highly comedic film…
The “I want my father back, you son of a bitch” scene in The Princess Bride gets me everytime I watch it (which must be nearing triple digits by now).
One of the saddest movie scenes (which deatures the saddest line I can think of) came toward the very end of Barry Levinson’s “Avalon.”
Old Sam Krichinsky, feeble and increasingly senile, is now in a Baltimore nursing home. His grandon, now a grown man, is visiting him. Sam tells his grandson that, recently, he had tried to visit his old neighborhood, but nothing remained. The only familiar spot that still stood was an old bar/nightclub that Sam had once owned. Sam says, “If I’knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember them better.”
I’m nowhere near as old as Sam (yet), but every time I return to my old neighborhood and see how things have changed, I understand him all too well.
The Yearling - Just about the whole movie. Especially when Flag dies.
Homeward Bound - At the end when Shadow’s (the golden retreiver) boy thinks he’s not coming home like his brother and sister’s pets did. He says “He was old, he was just too old”. This of course is following by one of the happiest scenes in any movie.
Shawshank Redemption - When Brooks is parolled and has to release his pet crow.
I’m seeing a pattern here.
Transformers the movie:
Perceptor: I fear the wounds are… fatal!
Daniel: Prime, you can’t die!
Optimus Prime: Do not grieve… Soon… I shall be one with the Matrix… (All the while, he’s obviously in pain)
If that wasn’t the saddest movie scene ever, I don’t know what is!
The entire “Chavaleh” sequence from Fiddler on the Roof always gets me.
Pretty much all of What Dreams May Come.
The Mirror of Erised scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone where Harry sees his parents.
The end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where Jen’s [i believe that’s her name] boyfriend finds her on the bridge and she retells the story she told him about the boy who jumped from the mountain and just flew away, then says, “Make a wish, Lo,” and jumps . . . Ehhh. I need to see that tonight.